CSMEP Integrated Costs Database Tool

A tool to assist biologists and fisheries managers in evaluating the cost of alternative designs for monitoring and evaluation of fish populations

The Integrated Costs Database Tool (ICDT) has been developed by CBFWA's Collaborative Systemwide Monitoring and Evaluation Project (CSMEP) to enable fisheries monitoring plan designers to explore different combinations of sampling equipment and associated staffing allocations that capture multiple fish population performance measures, and to game with how their choices affect costs throughout the process. The ICDT is not intended to be a precise budgeting tool, but instead has been developed to allow exploration of more general cost differences across a variety of monitoring and evaluation design alternatives.

Using the ICDT, sampling needs for fish population status and trends monitoring can be integrated into monitoring designs at any geographic scale, and desired elements of effectiveness monitoring for habitat actions, hatchery management, hydrosystem actions and/or harvest management can be added. There is no defined limit to scope. The tool provides estimated costs for monitoring designs, and lists a suite of performance measures that could be captured with the varied design components. Default costs used within the ICDT for different monitoring elements are based on median costs provided by CSMEP biologists. However, the tool has also been designed to allow the user to change these default costs within the underlying MS Access database tables, as well as add new monitoring elements, if greater customization is desired.

To provide feedback please contact Marc Porter and Ken MacDonald.